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Thursday, February 17, 2011

FacEDbook

Traditionally at New Canaan High School Library, we asked juniors to post their research topics to a Moodle (open source course management system) forum. But the Moodle forum is hard to access and complicated to navigate. It wasn't a popular destination, so this year, we decided to open a Facebook group and use that as a forum instead. Students from two English classes (so far) posted their thoughts on topics, added keywords, and resources, then they were asked to provide feedback and suggestions to their classmates' posts. This is what three students had to say about their experience. Note: this is day two in the process.

9 comments:

Thank you for posting this. I enjoyed hearing from the students why this is important. Is there a public link to the FaceBook group page? We have just finally convinced our school to open up Twitter and FaceBook isn't even a remote consideration right now. Regardless, it would be beneficial to look at the Facebook group's page for ideas.

Very nice work! The best part is that students came to those conclusions on their own -- much more effective learning (and more likely to "stick") than the teacher trying to impart that same insight! Thanks for sharing, and keep up the great work.

@Suzie Email me (me@bibliotech.me) your FB handle and I will invite you to the group. This was only day 2, and the kids are on vacation right now, so not a whole lot going on this week. But just wait until I start prodding on Monday. One of the upsides of using facebook - there are 100,000 BTW, is that no educator had to set up a group! Teehee. We asked the kids how they wanted to do this, gave them some choices (Moodle Google Apps, Blogger), and naturally, they chose facebook. The caveat was this: kids had to set up the group. I emailed someone the class lists (this is two classes collaborating together) and they set it up. No email addresses, no unfamiliar log in, no lost passwords, no tech support. Poof! Just getting to work.